That's VTM in name only. It's a fucking multiplayer-only battle royale game. How the fuck do you think someone who wants a single-player RPG is going to be satisfied with that kind of shit?
I get the impression a lot of people enjoyed V20 and thought it a return to form after Vampire: The Requiem went bust.
This thread says there are a handful of ~balance~ changes (while acknowledging it's mostly the same as the last edition).
Didn't know barbarians are into spelling.
There are. But it's just a touch-up, a patch if you will. Less so even than D&D3.5 was to 3.0. Don't get me wrong I use V20 myself when I play Vampire these days. It's just not a new edition, really.
Somebody got so mad about V5 that they decided to make their own game… and title it Lost Kindred. Last I heard they’re going to change it for copyright reasons, but tbh it sounds like a lazy ripoff. Not that I’m complaining, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt until it releases. Hopefully it won’t be another Vampire: Undeath.
At least until V5 came out.I get the impression a lot of people enjoyed V20 and thought it a return to form after Vampire: The Requiem went bust.
VtM ran out of ideas by second edition and everything since then has just been repackaging the same thing over and over. VtR had arguably worse bloodline bloat, but I found the bursts of creativity more interesting. It gave us neat ideas like Khaibit or Architects of the Monolith.
Devs have had two decades to do this and the only attempts we’ve seen are DARK and Vampyr. I’d like to see more vampire and urban fantasy rpgs, computer and tabletop, but it seems that creators are too lazy to make them and would prefer to hold out hope that Paradox will save the day. I think they can take that market monopoly and shove it up their ass. If nothing else, Paradox alienating their fans and botching the video games will force at least some of the sloths to break away and do their own thing. An OSR movement for urban fantasy would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath any time soon.
VtR was an uninspired, boring rehash. Streamlining everything down to 5 clans X 5 "covenants" was a terrible idea, and the optional slew of various bloodlines didn't make up for the fact that the bulk of the vampire population are supposed to be one of five normie vampire archetypes.
I get the impression a lot of people enjoyed V20 and thought it a return to form after Vampire: The Requiem went bust.
Uh huh. If VtR came out first then you'd be saying the exact opposite, because nostalgia is a powerful force. If VtM had never been made and Rein-Hagen decided to make a vampire game now, then it would look completely different... and fanboys would mindlessly sing it praises, because that's what fanboys do. (Am I being cynical? Yes, thanks for noticing.) I don't disagree that the 5x5 is perhaps too streamlined (or not enough: I think you could easily cut it down to just 3, as shown by Red Embrace: Hollywood cutting it down to sappy socialites, rugged individualists, and tormented psykers), but I don't think that's a good argument for VtM being in any way superior. They just made shit up as they went and arbitrarily stopped at 13 clans (and one book says there were actually 23 or so, fwiw). Why stop there? Why have a fixed number of cliques when you can have as much as you want? (Also, many of the clan concepts are just fucking stupid: arab ninjas, thieving gypsies, incestuous mobsters... jfc who came up with this and thought it was good idea for a core splat? No, I don't care that later writers tried to "fix" this problem by "expanding" the concepts and I don't think they succeeded either. Not to mention that the other half of them are blatant ripoffs of the works of Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Brian Lumley, Robert E. Howard, and Yuzo Takada, among others. The books don't even give proper credit, either.)
Totally. Writing vampire fiction after Dracula has ruined vampires. Nobody should ever do anything new. /sI get the impression a lot of people enjoyed V20 and thought it a return to form after Vampire: The Requiem went bust.
"We give up and admit defeat" is better than the alternative for sure, but it's hardly admirable. They could have just skipped out on the whole intervening decades of destroying their brand.
No, retard. If VtR came out first, it wouldn't live to see a second edition, let alone a remake. Literally no one would even remember this pile of mediocrity. Same with nuwerewolf and numage.
Uh huh.
Because they're not bland boring shit.
Interesting lore.
An even better one, if they put effort into it. There are plenty of alien mythos to pick from, including UFO/X-Files stuff, lovecraftian mythos, ancient astronauts/annunaki, and even fairies could still be part of it to some degree, as one particular type of extra-dimensional alien entities that like to abduct humans and change them. Btw the next post you start with "uh-huh" will land you in the ignore bin.
Such as? How could that be backported to the games you consider boring?
They could have gone down the route of licensing to shift the IP into a cinematic universe and licensed games. Both of those things had enough demand to essentially happen in spite of the IP holder. (Less setting, more stories.)Uh huh. If VtR came out first then you'd be saying the exact opposite, because nostalgia is a powerful force. If VtM had never been made and Rein-Hagen decided to make a vampire game now, then it would look completely different... and fanboys would mindlessly sing it praises, because that's what fanboys do. (Am I being cynical? Yes, thanks for noticing.) I don't disagree that the 5x5 is perhaps too streamlined (or not enough: I think you could easily cut it down to just 3, as shown by Red Embrace: Hollywood cutting it down to sappy socialites, rugged individualists, and tormented psykers), but I don't think that's a good argument for VtM being in any way superior. They just made shit up as they went and arbitrarily stopped at 13 clans (and one book says there were actually 23 or so, fwiw). Why stop there? Why have a fixed number of cliques when you can have as much as you want? (Also, many of the clan concepts are just fucking stupid: arab ninjas, thieving gypsies, incestuous mobsters... jfc who came up with this and thought it was good idea for a core splat? No, I don't care that later writers tried to "fix" this problem by "expanding" the concepts and I don't think they succeeded either. Not to mention that the other half of them are blatant ripoffs of the works of Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Brian Lumley, Robert E. Howard, and Yuzo Takada, among others. The books don't even give proper credit, either.)
Also, and you may consider this nitpicking, clans in VtR serve a completely different role from clans in VtM. Despite sharing the same name, they're not actually comparable in scope. VtR clans are more closely comparable to (using cWoD comparisons) mage essences, werewolf auspices, orpheus laments, demon houses, or mummy dynasties (all of which are basically test runs for nCoD's x-axis splats), where VtR bloodlines are the most similar in scope to VtM clans (and bloodlines). They're just there to provide some degree of structure when determining overall talents, they don't determine overall personality or ideology like VtM clans do. What was previously covered by VtM's clans was split among VtR's clans, covenants, and bloodlines. In other words, VtM splats are stereotypes whereas VtR splats are archetypes (if that comparison makes any sense, since my inner pedant is tingling as I write this). You're basically complaining that the VtR splats don't determine enough of your character's personality, ideology, etc because you're used to VtM doing all the work for you. Heck, if VTR included conversions of all the old clans right out of the box (rather than releasing a translation guide 6 years later as they did in our timeline, along with a scattering of other adaptations before then like Malkovians and Sangiovanni) then you probably wouldn't be complaining at all. Heck, if it was released under a completely different brand name out of the gate rather than being rebranded years later then you probably wouldn't unfavorably compare them to one another in the first place.
As I recall, one of the VTR books stated "you have our permission to use this optional rule to remove clans and just use bloodlines. All bazillion of them." Too bad they didn't take their own advice... oh wait, they did. They introduced new clans and new covenants in subsequent sourcebooks, but they just couldn't reference them because of their absurd rule to mostly avoid interbook references even though their "lore" (such as it is) is pretty bloated. (Anyone who say it doesn't have lore is full of shit. It doesn't have metaplot developments or a coherent canon, but jfc it spends huge amounts of words on its supposedly-but-not-really toolkit setting.) Too little too late? Hindsight is 20/20? I really can't give a fuck anymore since it's been over a decade since I cracked open a book because I fucking hate this company and their many boneheaded decisions.
In any case, I don't give a flying fuck about canon or lore debates. It's not a hill I'm willing to die on so I just hate on both when it suits me. I think there's room for different settings with different focuses to coexist on the market (just look at the bazillion D&D settings). These edition wars about whose game is better are fucking stupid. You guys don't actually care about the gameplay, you just want validation from the IP owners that your preferences are the bestest ever. That toxic nerd shit is precisely what drove me away from this fandom and right into D&D fandom and the OSR. (I still hold a candle for Troika's work on BL or else I wouldn't even be here. My equal disdain for WoD/CoD does not endear me to fandom circles.)
Anyway, have a nice day! I may disagree with you, but that indicates no ill will on my part.
Totally. Writing vampire fiction after Dracula has ruined vampires. Nobody should ever do anything new. /sI get the impression a lot of people enjoyed V20 and thought it a return to form after Vampire: The Requiem went bust.
"We give up and admit defeat" is better than the alternative for sure, but it's hardly admirable. They could have just skipped out on the whole intervening decades of destroying their brand.
You guys may still be butthurt about it all these years later, but WW had economic reasons for doing the CoD reboot. The RPG market was shrinking and WW was losing money. The marketing department thought that 3rd edition, and later the CoD reboot, would bring in money. It didn't, and even if they didn't reboot then the result would have been the same. What were they even supposed to do to continue? They'd already exhausted all their ideas back in 2nd edition and couldn't do anything new. Every subsequent edition has been an uninspired repackaging of old material with minor tweaks. When they try to do anything new, as with V3 and V5, you guys complain about it incessantly.
They didn't burn your books or ban you from playing. They just put WoD on a hiatus while they tried to do new stuff. When they brought WoD back, they did nothing new with it for a while and then when they did something new you guys complained. You're still butthurt about 3rd edition and CoD, much less V5. You guys don't give a fuck about the actual gameplay, you just want validation. You want the IP owner to tell you that your preferred headcanon that you only like because nostalgia is the bestest ever. You want them to keep producing endless rehashes of the same material so you can read about irrelevant lore dumps because it gives you a sense of validation, and if they dare to impugn on your nostalgia then you complain.
There's really nothing WW could have done. Even if they had continued to produce endless rehash, they'd probably still have ended up being bought, dissolved, and sold again by CCP. Paradox would still have bungled everything. The producers would still be woke. They didn't destroy their brand by putting WoD on hiatus to produce CoD. The brand was doomed no matter what they did. I mean, how the fuck do you avoid Werewolf: The Apocalypse alienating audiences with its obnoxious 90s wokeness? If nothing else, CoD at least tried to be more timeless and apolitical in its appeal (altho it made tons of decisions I disagree with, particularly in its omission of ghost PCs and the bizarre direction it took with demons, and I don't think it's supposed timelessness would've saved it from mismanagement anyway).
But anyway, I've gone through the same cycle of validation seeking many times. Sometimes I still do. I hate it and I hate myself. That's why I decided to work on my own stuff in my spare time. I can't sit and wait for others to hopefully produce something that maybe I'd like. If you want something done right by you, then you do it yourself. It's more productive and mentally healthy, and I encourage everyone else to do the same. Make your own vampire settings, make multiple vampire settings each. You're only limited by your own imagination. (This is me suggesting you should make an OSR movement for WoD. Storyteller Vault can suck it.)
Anyway, have a nice day! I may disagree with you, but that indicates no ill will on my part.
WW tried that in the 90s with Kindred: The Embraced. It was canceled after one season and they never tried again (or tried and failed, e.g. VTR was optioned for a movie that never got made). This has pretty much been the case for every attempt at branching out into other mediums. Bloodlines became a cult classic years after it bombed on release (and then only due to Troika’s skill in writing combined with Valve’s advanced facial animation software). Paradox’s licensed games have been… unsatisfactory.They could have gone down the route of licensing to shift the IP into a cinematic universe and licensed games. Both of those things had enough demand to essentially happen in spite of the IP holder. (Less setting, more stories.)Uh huh. If VtR came out first then you'd be saying the exact opposite, because nostalgia is a powerful force. If VtM had never been made and Rein-Hagen decided to make a vampire game now, then it would look completely different... and fanboys would mindlessly sing it praises, because that's what fanboys do. (Am I being cynical? Yes, thanks for noticing.) I don't disagree that the 5x5 is perhaps too streamlined (or not enough: I think you could easily cut it down to just 3, as shown by Red Embrace: Hollywood cutting it down to sappy socialites, rugged individualists, and tormented psykers), but I don't think that's a good argument for VtM being in any way superior. They just made shit up as they went and arbitrarily stopped at 13 clans (and one book says there were actually 23 or so, fwiw). Why stop there? Why have a fixed number of cliques when you can have as much as you want? (Also, many of the clan concepts are just fucking stupid: arab ninjas, thieving gypsies, incestuous mobsters... jfc who came up with this and thought it was good idea for a core splat? No, I don't care that later writers tried to "fix" this problem by "expanding" the concepts and I don't think they succeeded either. Not to mention that the other half of them are blatant ripoffs of the works of Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Brian Lumley, Robert E. Howard, and Yuzo Takada, among others. The books don't even give proper credit, either.)
Also, and you may consider this nitpicking, clans in VtR serve a completely different role from clans in VtM. Despite sharing the same name, they're not actually comparable in scope. VtR clans are more closely comparable to (using cWoD comparisons) mage essences, werewolf auspices, orpheus laments, demon houses, or mummy dynasties (all of which are basically test runs for nCoD's x-axis splats), where VtR bloodlines are the most similar in scope to VtM clans (and bloodlines). They're just there to provide some degree of structure when determining overall talents, they don't determine overall personality or ideology like VtM clans do. What was previously covered by VtM's clans was split among VtR's clans, covenants, and bloodlines. In other words, VtM splats are stereotypes whereas VtR splats are archetypes (if that comparison makes any sense, since my inner pedant is tingling as I write this). You're basically complaining that the VtR splats don't determine enough of your character's personality, ideology, etc because you're used to VtM doing all the work for you. Heck, if VTR included conversions of all the old clans right out of the box (rather than releasing a translation guide 6 years later as they did in our timeline, along with a scattering of other adaptations before then like Malkovians and Sangiovanni) then you probably wouldn't be complaining at all. Heck, if it was released under a completely different brand name out of the gate rather than being rebranded years later then you probably wouldn't unfavorably compare them to one another in the first place.
As I recall, one of the VTR books stated "you have our permission to use this optional rule to remove clans and just use bloodlines. All bazillion of them." Too bad they didn't take their own advice... oh wait, they did. They introduced new clans and new covenants in subsequent sourcebooks, but they just couldn't reference them because of their absurd rule to mostly avoid interbook references even though their "lore" (such as it is) is pretty bloated. (Anyone who say it doesn't have lore is full of shit. It doesn't have metaplot developments or a coherent canon, but jfc it spends huge amounts of words on its supposedly-but-not-really toolkit setting.) Too little too late? Hindsight is 20/20? I really can't give a fuck anymore since it's been over a decade since I cracked open a book because I fucking hate this company and their many boneheaded decisions.
In any case, I don't give a flying fuck about canon or lore debates. It's not a hill I'm willing to die on so I just hate on both when it suits me. I think there's room for different settings with different focuses to coexist on the market (just look at the bazillion D&D settings). These edition wars about whose game is better are fucking stupid. You guys don't actually care about the gameplay, you just want validation from the IP owners that your preferences are the bestest ever. That toxic nerd shit is precisely what drove me away from this fandom and right into D&D fandom and the OSR. (I still hold a candle for Troika's work on BL or else I wouldn't even be here. My equal disdain for WoD/CoD does not endear me to fandom circles.)
Anyway, have a nice day! I may disagree with you, but that indicates no ill will on my part.
Totally. Writing vampire fiction after Dracula has ruined vampires. Nobody should ever do anything new. /sI get the impression a lot of people enjoyed V20 and thought it a return to form after Vampire: The Requiem went bust.
"We give up and admit defeat" is better than the alternative for sure, but it's hardly admirable. They could have just skipped out on the whole intervening decades of destroying their brand.
You guys may still be butthurt about it all these years later, but WW had economic reasons for doing the CoD reboot. The RPG market was shrinking and WW was losing money. The marketing department thought that 3rd edition, and later the CoD reboot, would bring in money. It didn't, and even if they didn't reboot then the result would have been the same. What were they even supposed to do to continue? They'd already exhausted all their ideas back in 2nd edition and couldn't do anything new. Every subsequent edition has been an uninspired repackaging of old material with minor tweaks. When they try to do anything new, as with V3 and V5, you guys complain about it incessantly.
They didn't burn your books or ban you from playing. They just put WoD on a hiatus while they tried to do new stuff. When they brought WoD back, they did nothing new with it for a while and then when they did something new you guys complained. You're still butthurt about 3rd edition and CoD, much less V5. You guys don't give a fuck about the actual gameplay, you just want validation. You want the IP owner to tell you that your preferred headcanon that you only like because nostalgia is the bestest ever. You want them to keep producing endless rehashes of the same material so you can read about irrelevant lore dumps because it gives you a sense of validation, and if they dare to impugn on your nostalgia then you complain.
There's really nothing WW could have done. Even if they had continued to produce endless rehash, they'd probably still have ended up being bought, dissolved, and sold again by CCP. Paradox would still have bungled everything. The producers would still be woke. They didn't destroy their brand by putting WoD on hiatus to produce CoD. The brand was doomed no matter what they did. I mean, how the fuck do you avoid Werewolf: The Apocalypse alienating audiences with its obnoxious 90s wokeness? If nothing else, CoD at least tried to be more timeless and apolitical in its appeal (altho it made tons of decisions I disagree with, particularly in its omission of ghost PCs and the bizarre direction it took with demons, and I don't think it's supposed timelessness would've saved it from mismanagement anyway).
But anyway, I've gone through the same cycle of validation seeking many times. Sometimes I still do. I hate it and I hate myself. That's why I decided to work on my own stuff in my spare time. I can't sit and wait for others to hopefully produce something that maybe I'd like. If you want something done right by you, then you do it yourself. It's more productive and mentally healthy, and I encourage everyone else to do the same. Make your own vampire settings, make multiple vampire settings each. You're only limited by your own imagination. (This is me suggesting you should make an OSR movement for WoD. Storyteller Vault can suck it.)
Anyway, have a nice day! I may disagree with you, but that indicates no ill will on my part.
